The highlight of my day was getting my compass plate back from the kiln. It has really deep meaning for me and I really love it a lot. Really everything about the ocean has so much symbolism with my own life.
I feel like sometimes I'm the ocean. I don't know if that's prideful to say or not ... but the ocean is so big and huge and so many people only want to sail on the surface. Sometimes I'm calm, sometimes I get angry, but I feel like very few people have been willing to plunge into who I really am. I know I'm beautiful and am filled to the brim with things waiting to be discovered, but sometimes I need help with that. More often than not people are fine with just staying on my surface and to be quite honest, my surface is boring. My surface is shy. My surface doesn't understand very much. My surface is quiet and curious and naive and gullible and too trusting. My surface is too judgmental of myself and it doesn't think I'm good enough. But underneath my surface, the part that only a few people get to see (and parts that no one has seen yet), I think is overflowing with greatness. Everyone has greatness and for once I actually want to talk about my own. My depths are bursting with color and ideas and it's loud and sometimes my thoughts are so loud it literally hurts to speak. My depths are infinitely curious and filled with wonder from the world. My depths whisper aspirations that seem impossible but they drive me. My depths have deep pain and sadness brought on by storms and shipwrecks and sirens that I thought would stay in my life forever. I've learned all too soon that nothing lasts though (or at least, very few things), so I don't want to open my depths to everyone. It's hard for me to express things sometimes. I constantly have to redirect myself because I'm always failing, whether that be actually failing or just being too hard on myself.
So to bring this post full circle, my compass plate reminds me to share the depths of who I am, and it also reminds me that it's okay to fail as long as I continue to point myself home.
Big thanks to Ben for moving my camera around for the expansion when I couldn't really move from my spot on the wall, haha. We ran into each other today so he came with me when I took this photo. I was super glad he came along because he is a great human being as well as an incredibly talented photographer. And while talking to him, it made me realize just how relational photography is. I think I will have failed as a human being if I didn't meet as many people as possible, and photography is such a beautiful way to do that. Even if I was horrible at taking photos, I think I would still be happy if I could be with other people who loved what I loved. Because what makes me happiest is not coming up with ideas or taking photos or editing or posting them to share with others (though those do make me happy); what makes me happiest is being with people, and people who share the same passions as me (and even people who appreciate my passions). There's just something special about having something that is such a part of you also be such a part of someone else, and being able to connect in that way.
Even though I like this photo, I wish I could create some photos with an actual concept. I have tons of ideas sketched out in my sketchbook, but for some reason (one that I do not know), I never actually do them. I feel like I've reached that stage in photography where I've learned a lot of the editing and shooting process and mostly have that down (I say this lightly because there's always room for improvement), and the 365 is good for figuring those things out. But now I need to learn how to go through the process of coming up with a concept, preparing for it, and then shooting it successfully. It seems to me that the 365 (at least, if you actually take one photo each day) isn't quite the best for something like that. I could be wrong though. I could just be extremely lazy or scared to actually go out and do the more crazy ideas in my head. I don't know, I'm just sort of rambling on. Regardless, tomorrow is my busy day so I may not get a killer concept out the door just quite yet. But I hope you guys have a great day!
Part of me feels like I'm cheating completely with this whole personal style blogging thing when I wear outfits not even from my own wardrobe. (As if we could cheat with this stuff anyways.) I mean, not everyone can just pick out clothes that they didn't have to buy and wear them around. It's like my life is a walking pinterest dream. But really, I feel like there's an added challenge of going into a closet you're unfamiliar with and putting an outfit together without trying it on and then having to wear it the next day even if it looks bad on you because you already feel like you've outwarmed your welcome by invading someone else's closet in the first place (which I actually couldn't do because the girl I borrowed these from is the sweetest girl in the entire world) (and I really like this outfit, so Lauren got lucky!) I won't lie, it's awesome getting to have virtually eighteen other closets to pick and choose from, kind of because of feeling like I'm inside pinterest and kind of because it has really challenged me to explore different things and put together outfits based on patterns and color and proportion and not necessarily on how it looks on me. But what do you guys think? I want to know what your thoughts on this are!
But on to less controversial topics, I hope you guys had an awesome Thanksgiving break! Some of the highlights of mine were getting to see Matt, playing bingo, watching Skyfall, and watching Matt's family's old home videos. Little Matt was so precious and adorable and kind of made me fall in love with current Matt even more! It was so awesome being able to see him in person and I'm already counting down the days until when I get to see him again.
And now we officially can be in the Christmas spirit! Hope you all have a great day!
